A Study On The Problems And Countermeasures In The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching

Implemented by Chinese Ministry of Education of Higher Education Department in 2007, College English Curriculum Requirements points out that the comprehensive ability of using language of the students should be nourished, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, etc., the teacher-centered classroom should be transformed into student-centered, and the teachers should adopt the new teaching methods.The students gain the integrated language skills through communication in the target language in real life situations, complete the tasks with learning objectives, and construct the knowledge system of the target language through their own experiences. Employing task-based language teaching (TBLT) in college English (CE) can develop students'integrated language skills. Although many researches have been carried out by linguists and language teaching researchers, those researches mainly focus on the application of TBLT in class. The studies on problems in teaching and countermeasures and suggestions for the improvement of TBLT are limited. The present study explores the major problems of TBLT based on the investigations. At the same time, some suggestions and countermeasures for the improvement of TBLT are discussed as well.35 college English teachers and 144 students from a comprehensive university were investigated, and the classroom observations were conducted as well. All the data and the texts were analyzed with EXCEL and SPSS 16.0.The major problems are: (1) Some teachers'understanding about TBLT theory is limited. It is found that only 11.4% of the teachers often read the books on TBLT, whereas 25.7% never do that; (2) Some teachers do not extend the tasks outside the classroom; (3) It is difficult for the teachers to apply TBLT in big class; (4) Most of the classes are"student-centered". But according to the student's investigation, it shouldn't always be student-centered in TBLT class. 43.1% of the students chose"teacher-centered, have activity when necessary"; (5) The present evaluating methods are not enough and some methods are ineffective. 80% of the teachers and 80.4% of the students chose"Performance assessment + Exam". However, it needs further explorations on how to carry out performance assessment and the form of the exams.The results show that although TBLT can promote the student's integrated language skills, many students are not confident and do not have much interest in doing the tasks. In order to improve the TBLT in CE teaching, some suggestions and countermeasures are discussed as follows: (1) Some teachers should enhance their theoretical level of TBLT. Thus, they should read the books on TBLT as much as they can; (2) When designing the tasks, the teachers should understand the components and phases of a task, and know the principles of designing the task; and second, the students can be involved in designing the tasks; (3) The teacher can make good use of group work, that is, classifying the class into several groups, assigning each group a group leader, requiring each group to prepare a lesson to solve the problems by themselves; (4) The teacher and students should change the roles in TBLT class, that is, sometimes it is"student-centered"and sometimes it is"teacher-centered"; (5) The teacher can apply three formative assessment methods, that is, teacher assessment, peer-assessment and self-assessment.